Intel Arc B580 does not open/crash in Need For Speed ​​Heat.

[cabeswater]

the game opens and talks about my driver being out of date (a lie, I have the most current one, 6559) and asks if I want to continue, and then it crashes, or in some cases, it opens, runs the menu smoothly and on the world loading screen, it crashes. I tried every option imaginable to make it run and it didn't work, I've currently uninstalled the game, but if I have a good idea of ​​how to solve it I'll download it again to try. Short of downloading another driver, I would have to get an extremely old one, which would cause instability in other games.

[DhannielM_Intel]

Hello cabeswater,

Thank you for reaching out to the community regarding your Intel Arc B580 issue with Need for Speed Heat. I understand that you're experiencing difficulties launching the game. After conducting an internal review, it appears that the problem originates from the game's application itself. The error message you're encountering is due to an outdated format that incorrectly checks the driver version, causing the game to mistakenly identify it as outdated, even though it is not.

To resolve this, I recommend contacting the game developers for further clarification and potential updates that address this issue. They may have additional insights or patches available to correct the driver version check.

Best regards,

Dhanniel M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[DhannielM_Intel]

Hello cabeswate,

I wanted to follow up to see if you've had a chance to review the information I shared in my previous response. As I mentioned, you may need to contact the game developers for further insights. Additionally, could you please provide an image of the error message you're encountering? It would also be helpful if you could share a crash dump file. You can find the steps for creating a crash dump at this link: Crashing/freezing issues/BSOD:

Best regards,

Dhanniel M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[cabeswater]

Hi Dhaniel! Sorry for the delay for answer. I downloading the game again for do the test again, including with the new driver 6632. i will send the archive that you requested soon. the contact with the devs of need for speed, i think that hes will not answer me, but i try this.

[cabeswater]

Hello again friend, I bring more bad news, my game now simply doesn't even show any sign of life, it even appears in the task manager for a measly 2 seconds and disappears, it barely consumes system resources. I did everything I could imagine for it to at least give the error it had before, but nothing, not even the integrated graphics works, strange that there is no driver for the integrated graphics, or anything like that

[DhannielM_Intel]

Hello cabeswater,

That's unexpected. Could you try collecting the dump file? It might help me identify why the issue is occurring and why the application isn't opening. Additionally, did this problem start after you installed the latest driver version 32.0.101.6632, or was it present before the update? Have you tried using the custom installation option and checked the "Clean Installation" box? To gain a better understanding of your system, please use the System Support Utility (SSU) to generate a text file with all your system information. You can follow the instructions at this link and send the text file here: Help Guide for the Intel® System Support Utility

Best regards,

Dhanniel M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[cabeswater]

Hey, I put it to download again, to avoid any error during the download. I found the dump process very deep, but I will do it if it will help you solve the problem, it will take me a while to answer you. 7 hours until I get back home, and another 2 hours to do the whole testing process and send you another message. See you later

[cabeswater]

Hello again, Dhaniel! Here's what I got from the tests: I downloaded the game again and ran the repair game option in the EA app. My game now opens and displays the driver message as before (I attached the screenshot). To our surprise, the game opens and runs now. However, I noticed a problem. On my first playthrough, the game was giving me some crazy hiccups. It seemed like I was playing with Vulkan. I closed the game before finishing the tutorial race so I could redo it and have at least a slightly more accurate set of tests. The second time, there weren't as many crashes, but they still existed. I started checking the fps and noticed that it was running at 75 before entering the city, and between 50 and 59 fps when entering the city, and this stays at the average until the end of it. I found it strange. I'm running everything at the highest setting in 1440p and the game's own resolution scale at 85%. I honestly don't think this is the real FPS I can get in the game, so I configured MSI Afterburner to monitor in depth what was happening on the card, and then, I saw that the card was taking 80 to 91% usage in the first area before entering the city, and between 66 to 81% usage when entering the city, which is extremely strange. Remember the stutters I mentioned? So, now they are less constant, even rare, at least in our battery of tests that is this initial race, but I was able to monitor what happened when it occurred, the GPU usage dropped drastically to 20% or less, with it the consumption and temperatures dropped drastically too (I didn't notice any thermal throttling, everything at a maximum of 69 degrees, both chip and memory).Seriously, I really, really doubt that it's a case of a bottleneck CPU. I decided to change some graphics settings, and I found it easier to do them directly in the game's resolution scale, since it directly impacts the GPU, so to speak. I set it to 50%: the FPS dropped to 45-48fps, and the GPU usage also dropped to 48-55%, extremely strange. I set the resolution scale to 200%, the GPU usage went to 99% now, with almost no oscillation, but obviously the FPS decreased, not that it's important, but it was on average 25-30fps.
Well, about the battery of tests, I think that's it. I did the thing of checking the entire setup, I'm sending it to you along with it, I also went through the process of showing the crashes in the dump, but there were no more crashes, I checked the folder created each time I ran the tests and nothing appeared there. I restarted the PC about 2 times between tests to remove any errors in Windows that may have occurred or some other abnormality. A curiosity that may be interesting, there is a thing called "dxvk" that basically changes DirectX to Vulkan, this is known to bring several benefits to Intel Arc, and with the b580 it is no different. I did some tests in other games before and it works very well, especially in relation to this issue of using a low GPU, I tried to use it in Need for Speed ​​Heat, but without success, the game even opens, at first it runs the menu everything fine, but it does not show the image, I only have the sound of the game running, but this only happens if I leave the settings in fullscreen, without leaving it in windowed or without borders, it opens and works, however,My game seems to be running at a resolution higher than my screen and the screen is cut off, as if I had zoomed in on the screen. But we got better FPS and 99% GPU usage as expected, 80 to 90 FPS outside the city and 77 to 83 inside it. Some normal Vulkan stutters on the first playthrough, I restarted the race (without closing the game, I just clicked restart to be fair, now that the shaders have been compiled) and the card ran smoothly now, in the first round there the usage kept dropping to 87% and consequently the FPS, but in this one with the shaders ready, 99% usage without dropping and good FPS. I also noticed an increase in VRAM usage, on average 1500 to 2000MB of more VRAM using DXVK.Well, I couldn't solve the zoomed screen issue in Vulkan, so I'll have to go back to standard DirectX 11. I apologize for the huge text that you'll have to try to digest (I'm really sorry, I tried to summarize as much as possible), but I did a lot of testing and I believe it's useful enough to at least give us a direction to aim for. I messed with the Need for Speed ​​folder, which is separate from the game's root folder. It only contains the settings, saves, and a folder called Crash Dumps, with several .mdmp files. Unfortunately, I can't read any of them. I'll try to send them to you too. Edit: I couldn't send them, so I'll compress them into a .zip folder so I can send them.

[cabeswater]

Hello again, I had the same problem with Need for Speed ​​2015. Including the message about my drivers being old. The game keeps crashing like crazy, same fps and same settings, but this game has no resolution scaling, so I played in native 1440p.

[DhannielM_Intel]

Hello cabeswater,

Thank you for the detailed response. I've summarized the information you've shared with me. However, I'm curious about the game settings you're using. Could you please share a screenshot of your current settings?

Best regards,

Dhanniel M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[cabeswater]

Hi Dhanniel!

Here are the prints.
On 1440p, 85% resolution scale, all on the ultra, vsync off.

[DhannielM_Intel]

Hello cabeswater,

Thank you for sharing this to me. I will proceed with a further investigation into this matter and will provide you with an update as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Dhanniel M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[DhannielM_Intel]

Hello cabeswater,

Thank you for your patience. Before proceeding with further investigation, I have a follow-up question. Have you tried using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to completely remove the graphics driver before installing a new one? If not, could you please try using DDU and let me know the results? You can find instructions on how to use DDU below:

1. Download Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)< software and extract the file.
2. Open DDU ****.exe and run extract program.
3. Reboot into Windows* safe mode. (Refer to Start your PC in safe mode in Windows.)
4. Go to the DDU extract path and double-click the Display Driver Uninstaller.exe to open DDU.
5. Click Close in the Options window.
6. Select device type to GPU and select device to INTEL.
7. Click Clean and restart or Clean and Shutdown depending on your needs
8. Wait the software to finish the process and auto reboot Windows to the normal mode or shutdown.

Best regards,

Dhanniel M.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[cabeswater]

Hi dhanniel!

So, i really dont think that this method will result in any diference in tests. But, i will test it for you

[cabeswater]

im here again.

i do the tutorial with the ddu. i tested the game again and i got zero difference on tests. Look, I think that problem is caused by driver overhead. You can find a lot of videos about this. In case you don't know this, it's basically a problem that makes the b580 operate as if it were being limited by the cpu. It literally acts as if it had a cpu bottleneck, even though that's impossible. If you want to look into it more, just search on youtube for "intel arc b580 driver overhead".
I would also like to mention that I'm going to change some parts of my pc soon, I'm going to change the processor and the motherboard.
I'm going to install an asus tuf b650m-e wifi, and a ryzen 5 7600. So if there's anything to test, whether in the game or in relation to the processor, it would be interesting to do it before the change. But after the change I'll also do these tests to see if there was any change.

[DhannielM_Intel]

Hello cabeswater,

I understand, and I appreciate your assistance in performing the DDU. This will greatly aid in my investigation of the issue. I will provide you with an update as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Dhanniel M.

Intel Customer Support Technician